« There’s Gold in Them Thar Internets | Home | State of Play »
NotM : X-COM UFO Defense-Introduction
By Corvus | April 25, 2008
Welcome to the third entry in the Narrative of the Moment feature. This ongoing, and somewhat irregular, series of posts explores the storytelling techniques of video games and other media. The current Narrative of the Moment is the classic turn based strategy title, X-COM: UFO Defense.[1]
In 1993 Microprose published a turn based strategy (TBS) game from the mind of designer Julian Gollop. This game would set a high water mark for strategy gaming–spawning a dedicated fan base and countless imitations. Arguably, no TBS or real time strategy (RTS) game published in the last fifteen years has managed to satisfactorily recreate the compelling and complete experience this game provided–including the game’s direct descendants and myriad of spiritual successors.[2]
What about this game provided such a compelling video game experience? So compelling that people playing it for the first time today still heap praise upon it?^[3] So compelling that it has been ranked as the #1 game of all time, beating out such such notable titles as Starcraft, Civilization IV and Fallout?^[4] So compelling that I, fifteen years after playing it for the first time, still have difficulty maintaining my objectivity when discussing its successes and failings?
I believe, unsurprisingly I’m sure, that the answer is Story. While not typically approached as a storytelling game, I believe X-COM is exemplary in its creation of story and will spend several posts examining how assembles all of its narrative components into a super satisfactory whole.^[5]
Let me start off by confessing three very important things about my relationship with X-COM.
1) X-COM was the first video game I bought after a particularly difficult period of my life. I played it obsessively into the wee hours of the morning in my basement bedroom in a house containing myself and five roommates–one of whom was my ex-girlfriend. My living space was walled off by a set of metal utility shelves and my primary point of contact with my roommates was when they came down to do their laundry. This, believe it or not, was a dramatic improvement over the previous nine months of my life.
2) I don’t like strategy games, not strategy board games, not TBS games, not RTS games. I feel I ought to like them, but I don’t. Because of my antipathy, I’m not terribly practiced at playing them. This invariably leads me to become very frustrated when I attempt to overcome my aversion, leading to more loathing. It’s a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle. I have, to date, played exactly two strategy games through to completion–X-COM and Starcraft. I use cheat codes after the first couple of levels of Starcraft, just so I could finish out the plot. As for X-COM… well, read the next point.
3) I became so frustrated with my inability clear missions in X-COM that I figured out, on my own, how to hack the save files. I got a hex editor off a floppy from some DOS book and experimented with the soldier.dat and base.dat files until I figured out the addresses for all the character and base stats. I named all of my troopers after demons and gods from a variety of cultures and boosted their stats to the max. To date, X-COM is the only game that I still enjoy playing after I’ve cheated. And yes, I still hack my soldier stats when I play, only now I use one of the many utilities that someone else wrote to do so.
X-COM is a dense game. I have become used to firing up games without ever looking at the manual. In fact, I consider it a measure of a good game if I can find my way around the interface simply through playing the game. If, like Wind Waker or Portal, the game trains me how to play gradually, without resorting to lengthy and dull tutorial levels, it receives high marks in my books. But the tutorial for X-COM is the manual. Launching the game and expecting to successfully navigate every aspect of the gameplay without reading the manual simply isn’t reasonable. Today, this might spell the game’s doom. But in 1993, it was more the norm than the exception.
And you’ll need the manual if you want to play the game. Thanks to the anti-piracy efforts of the early 90’s, you’ll need to enter an eight digit code from the manual every time you wish to play the game. Even thought this would bother me in practically any other game, it adds to the X-COM experience. Secret alien fighting organizations that receive funding from the international community probably ought to take some old-school precautions against intrusion. It is in this way that the manual inadvertently lends itself to the storytelling efforts of X-COM. An unexpected and pleasant side effect to a publisher’s paranoia.
The manual itself is, like the game’s overall packaging, nuts-and-bolts practical. One short page is dedicated to the back story and the rest is split between the tutorial and a reference guide. The only real art, beside the cover, are screen shots and a few icons representing elements of the interface. Spartan, would be a good description of this games packaging. Even the jewel case containing the game CD is devoid of liner, although the game disk itself is graced with a stylized rendering of a snarling Muton, a powerful alien foe from within the game.
The game’s system requirements were not a barrier to entry for most PC gamers in 1993. That it needed only an 80386 20+ MHz and 2 MB of RAM meant my system at the time had plenty of overhead and I didn’t even need to customize the autoexec.bat and config.sys to run it. [6] Today it runs quite nicely in DOSBox and even when I switch to full screen on my LCD monitor with a native resolution of 1680×1050, I can easily navigate the UI and make out the necessary details of the game world.
And so our stage is set. In 1993 X-COM was perfectly positioned to make a grand entrance and leave a legacy of excellence that would leave us misty eyed and nostalgic, even if we aren’t naturally inclined to the type of gameplay it offered. Be sure to come back next week to find out exactly how it dug it’s storied hooks into our minds and hearts when we discuss the Visual, Auditory and Musical components of X-COM: UFO Defense.
[1] Published as UFO: Enemy Unknown in Europe and Australia. [return]
[2] I will likely discuss the game’s sequels and homages in the last post of this series. [return]
[3] Chronic Game Designer: Breaking Down X-COM [return]
[4] Top 25 PC Games of All Time [return]
[5] PJ’s Attic Narrative Components [return]
[6] After all, I’d already upgraded it significantly to run bothUltima VII and Ultima Underworld. [return]
Tagged:narrative components, NotM, storytelling, x-com. |
April 25th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Though I understand why frustration would lead you to hack soldiers, I’ve always felt that the fragility of your early troops are a crucial part of the narrative experience. Anybody who survives those early encounters quickly assumes the “grizzled veteran” role in the player’s mind, and watching them climb the ranks adds some neat psychological stuff that I hope you’ll address in further entries.
And how can someone as civilized as yourself not like strategy games? I’ll be in the corner smoking my pipe and shaking my head dolefully.
April 25th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Oh, and the link to the IGN story doesn’t work. As part of that story, they let Tom Chick write an essay on X-Com that you might be interested in.
http://pc.ign.com/articles/084/084420p1.html
April 25th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
That Tom Chick article is good, and has a link to the relocated Top 25 of all time, which was definitely published about eight years ago. Time for an update IGN–I don’t think Dune 2 should get slot #2, and frankly, I think Half-Life and X-Com need to switch places.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Odd, the link ought to have worked. IGN must not let you link into an article from the outside, perhaps? Anyway, I’ve updated the link. Thanks!
Troy, I’ll get to both those points–the fragility of the soldiers and my inability to enjoy most strategy games in… probably the third article of the series.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I’m excited to read about X-Com, because I hear that game mentioned pretty regularly, but I’ve never played it. I don’t even know much about it really. There’s probably a good chance your narrative will puch over the edge into wanting to play it.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Same here, I’ve only heard about the XCOM’s games, but have never even seen a screenshot.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
indeed, if an agent (the tecnical name for your soldiers) survives to make captain, he can make it to Cydonia, Mars. as for that, i make no guarntees. i lost nearly my entire avenger before mind-controlling the aliens in the brain room. once you get a commander, the same is true of sergents. you can take a causility a mission, but the losses are almost always among people without a mission to their credit.
April 26th, 2008 at 8:45 am
For those interested in trying the game inexpensively, it is available on GameTap’s Gold Membership ($10/mo); I found this is a great way to play some old games (and some not-so-old games) without as much hassle of configuring my system to handle it.
Of course, the voluminous manual for x-com is not available this way (although they usually supply a crib sheet for the code entry type of security.)
I’m not sure how it will work, as I’m downloading it now, and will probably play it sometime tomorrow.
April 26th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Ahh, the golden oldy days of required manual reading. It’s funny how my attitude about this relic of old-school gaming has evolved. When they first arrived, I admired games like the ones you mention which embed the tutorial experience into gameplay. It’s an elegant solution, and if done well can enhance the overall experience. I never assume I must read the manual for any game these days, and I’m usually right (unless I blow through the tutorial and miss something important).
But now, I sort of miss reading the manual before playing a game. Weird, huh? Remember how terrific the manuals and accompanying fiction included for Infocom games was? A lot of creative time and energy went into those, and I guess I miss them.
Or maybe I’m just getting old.
Looking forward to the rest of your X-Com series, Corvus.
April 26th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I miss having excellent game manuals as well. I think Blizzard is one of the few left that write detailed manuals for their games.
One aspect of X-Com is that it makes a great stage for After Action reports. This thread from QT3 was what inspired me to finally play X-Com after all these years . http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=32835&highlight=xcom
April 27th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
i was inspired by a very good fan-fic to look into other stuff that finally got me to play
April 30th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Still, without a doubt, my favorite game of all time.
This, for the record, is the disc which resides permanently in my PS1. Which sits on top of my PC.
And that the mechanics are generally designed to be player unfriendly by 2/3 of the game is just one of those things you don’t see much anymore. In some ways that’s when the “real” game appears, and hopefully you’ve prepared for it.
Narratively, I can say that I felt truly attached to my “aces” - those vets with enough skill to affect to the outcome of the game. In some ways that’s just strategic (because at some point you have little time to train up new ones) - but it also brought you to cruel battlefield decisions if, despite a casualty, the rest of the fight was going well.
I think the fact that we’ve never gotten a truly decent follow up - and I’m not dissing Terror From The Deep - that really evolves the game forward without just stapling on more “modern” RTS mechanics, shows how fragile this kind of good can really be. Oddly, I think Freedom Force might be the closes I’ve come to getting a similar feeling, even though that game is far on the other spectrum in so many ways.